I am trying to import xml file with some empty attributes to table. getting this error AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'strip'

Question

def XML_get_fields_and_types_and_data_levels_3(xml_file_name):
    data_2d = []
    for child in root:
        grandchildren = child.findall(".//")
        fields = []
        types = []
        data_1d = []
        data_2d.append(data_1d)
        for grandchild in grandchildren:
            data_1d.append(convert_string_to_type(grandchild.text))
        if grandchild.tag not in fields:
            fields.append(grandchild.tag)
            types.append(get_type_of_string(grandchild.text))
    return (fields, types, data_2d)

def get_type_of_string(string):
    clean_string = string.strip()
    try:
        if  clean_string is not None:
            clean_string = string.strip()
            return string.strip()
        if "." in clean_string:
            clean_string = string.split()
            if isinstance(clean_string, list):
                point_or_segment = [float(i) for i in clean_string]
                if len(point_or_segment) == 2:
                    return 'POINT'
                else:
                    return 'LSEG'
            else:
                val = float(clean_string)
                return 'REAL'
        else:
            val = int(clean_string)
            return 'INTEGER'
    except ValueError:
        return 'TEXT'

Answer 1

the issue is the line-of-code (loc) after your method definition,

def get_type_of_string(string): clean_string = string.strip()

there string might be None , so the exception is raised. Instead of re-writing the method for you, which would easy for me but not be very helpful for you, I suggest you to re-design this method. Here are my hints:

• there is duplicated code
• the split() method always returns a list, no matter if the separator is found, isn't, so there is no need for this line to exists if isinstance(clean_string, list)
• then why is this conversion in place if then val is not used thereafter? the easiest way to evaluate a variable type is by using the isinstance() builtin method as you did it few lines above.
• try to split this method, in simpler and smaller methods, or try to simplify its logic.

Hope this hints will help you through. Enjoy coding.